


The Smallest Pebbles in the Stream

by Showeranon



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Dubiously canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-02
Updated: 2015-10-02
Packaged: 2018-04-24 10:48:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4916632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Showeranon/pseuds/Showeranon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Agate and Iolite. Once colleagues, now much more focused on avoiding one another than their actual mission. Not that surveying planets is the most interesting when you've basically been marooned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Smallest Pebbles in the Stream

The air was hot and acrid, the plains were empty, and Agate was bored out of her mind. The little prefabricated hut that she laid back on had stood for going on seven years now. That was little time at all for gems, but something about the climate just… had its way with you. The monotony was as perennial as the chest-high dry grasses that surrounded the hut for miles and miles. The hut’s teal siding had become sunstained and bleached to a periwinkle, making Agate stand out like a rust-brown wound on its curved, metallic roof. The outer layer was a semi-solid metal composite - standard fare for alien system scouts in the field - that soaked up the sunlight like dry terry cloth.   
  


Agate arched her back and readjusted a left hand underneath her mass of hair. Her right swung lazily back and forth over the side, a signature flat stone occasionally clattering against the metal of the hut. Bare skin from midriff to waist eased back onto the metal. Almost searing, but pleasant in a way. She had adjusted her typical attire to a small top and pair of shorts, maintaining what little modesty she, or at least her partner, felt necessary.   
  


Where was she, anyway? Iolite had struck out for a nearby cluster of waterfalls early that morning. Stars knew how many hours ago. Given that this planet was capable of sustaining life there was a relatively short window of how long the day could actually be, and for the most part time soared by for gemkind. Even so, it was days like this that made Agate try her hardest to forget that she didn’t need to sleep.   
  


Agate had long since lost interest in the work that they had been assigned to. She was certain that Iolite would find some excuse to connect her trip to the falls with surveying the planet, but she knew that her partner was just as bored with this assignment as she was. She’d probably jump from ledge to ledge and scale the cliff face under the cascade, end up tossing some rocks off of the apex of the falls, then come back with a bunch of bullshit about how she was suddenly interested in researching hydroelectric power for a new settlement. Maybe today she’d finally fall and crack her gem.   
  


On its face, the prospect of investigating new territory was exciting and invigorating. Fresh resources, new species and landscapes; it had been what Agate had lived for at one point. That is, when she was relocating every couple of years. Even between the two of them she and Iolite had been able to make a rough chart of the region in just a few months, and the much of their local landmass in just over two, three years. The rest of their time had been spent painstakingly cataloging every little crevasse and hilltop, every landlocked lake and grove of trees. This was typical practice while they waited for new orders to come down from up top, but nothing had been transmitted in going on a year now; Agate's most recent natural resources assessment was still gathering figurative dust in a hard drive.   
  


Unfortunately for Agate, she didn’t think this was irregular. She knew damn well she was being punished, and what for she was pretty certain (Atmospheric survey vehicle, lightning). Though even with all the chances they may have had to talk about it, she wasn’t quite sure whether or not Iolite was here because of some unknown transgression or if she was just dumb enough to put up with this kind of treatment and call it an exciting new opportunity.

Agate rolled to her right and dropped down off of the hut, lazily falling into the grass with eyes shut and arms outstretched. She lay there for a moment before kipping up and stretching. She hadn’t gotten many chances to make the best use of her body, but then, she also hadn’t been given many chances to exercise her mind on this assignment either, at least after the first few years. The remains of a speeder lay in the immediate vicinity: Iolite had gotten into the habit of upgrading it, dismantling it, and reassembling it in their idleness. Normally she'd have taken it on her excursion, but hadn't been bothered to fix the damn thing this time. Agate rolled her eyes; with no warp technician in their meager twosome, their only chance of getting off planet would be when the survey mother ship swung by for pickup. Given that the closest warp pad was on a moon a good two weeks away by sublight vessels, it would be some time before anyone came to grab them, even after they’d been notified.   
  


Their wailing stone sat in the middle of the clearing, visibly weather-worn and silent, as it had for ages. Agate circled the hut and gave the stone a cursory glance before retreating inside. The gem on her forearm glowed as the siding split and moved apart.   
  


The pair had made a decent use of what little space they had been afforded. In all honesty, they didn’t really  need a whole lot of space. Enough room to protect two gems from the elements and afford each a bit of privacy would suffice. The interior of the hut consisted of a central common space with two small personal chambers to either side. The space that remained hosted a modest, but impressive computer array.   
  


Agate quickly paced into her side of the hut and collapsed on a pile of cushions. Her nook housed little more than a personal console and shelves containing some of the oddities that she had collected onsite during her mission, though three of the five shelves long stood empty. She curled her toes and sighed. She wanted to pretend it was a sigh of relief from a long day of hard work.   
  


Trying her best to forget, she tapped the console at the end of her nook with an outstretched toe, bringing the screen to life in green and white light. Agate yanked herself up and rolled over belly first onto her pile of cushions, cradling her chin in hand as her feeds loaded and twittered across the screen. The nodes she and Iolite had planted across the landscape were transmitting functionally. Just as they always were. Just as they always had been.   
  


Nothing new. And even if there had been, would she have cared? Agate had seen 7 long years come and go on this planet. What could anything new possibly be: a meteorological anomaly? Maybe an earthquake or brush fire? Occasionally the native… people would disable one of the survey nodes, but repairing and reactivating those was more of a chore than anything else.   
  


Agate flipped to a list of the nodes on her console and lazily scrolled to the ID of one nearest Iolite’s falls. She pinged it and waited for a response: high levels of humidity with strong electrical impulses… but a lack of telling plantigrade bipedal motion. She was still there, though doing what Agate had no idea. The signal was weak, remote as the node was. Whatever it was, she’d better wrap it up quick, thought Agate. The sun was about a hand’s height from the horizon, and given that neither were trained warriors, that usually meant a good time to find shelter in on this planet.   
  


Hours passed and Agate’s grimace widened in like. She didn’t respect Iolite much; she was annoying, too optimistic for the situation they were stuck in. She could do her job but not much else, the way Agate saw it. But she was safe. And being out after dark would make trouble for everyone.  
  


Agate kipped up and groaned. According to the node’s readings, Iolite was in the same place she had been hours ago, unmoving. Agate quickly memorized the node’s coordinates and stepped out of her cubby.   
  


More out of frustration and boredom than regard for her partner’s welfare, she steepled her fingers and emerged from a flash of light, now clad in a short jacket, a black leotard, and knee-high boots, her mass of hair tucked into a high ponytail. Agate strode to the exit of her pod and flicked her wrist, a rippled red-brown tomahawk falling into her rust colored palm. Agate glanced at the dismantled speeder and swore, breaking into a jog. She’d prefer to bring Iolite back when she didn’t have to carry her.   
  


Agate set out across the plains, trying to ignore the length of her shadow. Gem or not, it was dangerous to be out, even armed. But if it was dangerous for Agate, it was twice as dangerous for Iolite, nonconfrontational as she was. Agate just hoped that all of the time she’d spent swinging at wooden targets would come in handy. Or rather, that it wouldn’t have to.  
  


As the surveyor disappeared over a hill bathed in red light, the soundless hum of sublight engines in the void encroached on an uncivilized world’s atmosphere, just another faintly blinking point in the twilight sky. Elsewhere, the technician lay on her back, unspeaking, staring into her eyelids.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I'll write more based on interest. It's fun to do OCs, but I like writing stories for other people. I haven't written in a loooooong time because of school and mental health shit so this is just me trying to warm back up.


End file.
